I`m really not very happy at all with the squashed compressed effect one of our releases has come out with today.
I am now asking myself if the cd may not be dead after all.

I feel at the mercy of internet compression of my work.
Granted the average listener may not notice, but when you have worked on something for an amount of time, you tend to know exactly what it sounded like when you recorded it.
Yes, I have U-turned somewhat.

I have a new sound system in my little car and it's amazing how strong a proper CD sounds like on it (I had Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits blasting out at Conquer The Globe level) compared to a CD I burned from downloaded stuff.

I think it was Zoo or KZ that mentioned bandwidth etc on downloads.
I won`t name brand names in this case, but one download company sounds better than another one but the un-named "they", have managed to upload the project upside-down.(Doh!)
Just brilliant. I put a single out with bonus tracks and they put the single at track 7.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. As an audiophile (not to mention a bloke with ears), I HATE MP3 compression, I always notice it and as such I never download.

I believe the CD is far from dead, and will remain so until a lossless, compact format for digital music is discovered.

It`s the cymbal sounds that really annoy me most, we paid particular attention to them and even overdubbed them later.
They seem to be out of phase.
Also, on a further listen, I swear the stereo is reversed, which would probably explain this.

On the first previewed radio airing of the track, the radio compression disturbed me greatly, now it looks like we could well be in a situation of hearing compressed compression.
The local radio stations seem to prefer uploading MP3s from cds to their playlists.

It will be interesting(and frightening on first listen) to see how our June release fares.
We have stuck an 8 track recording in amongst the more expensive recordings.

Maybe we achieved perfect re-production of sound, then we decided it wasn`t required....(for a bit)

I hate MP3s and compressed files...I have ears and I can hear. Trouble is, the public don't.

MP3 compression - especially "auto" as used by upload websites - is fairly naff.

In some cases it is worth doing a mix for MP3, although this can become very time consuming as it's a bit hit and miss.

On an optimistic note... you are comparing in a way that the end listener won't.

I had this some years ago with the digital or analogue debate. What it came down to was if you listened to a song side by side you could find a difference but nobody would ever do this.

It is very hard to forget what it is supposed to sound like and hear if it's any good. If the MP3 track sounds ok then all is well even if the CD version is better.

We actually backed ourselves last week by doing our proper mix, and then the same mix again to MP3.
This was actually only done to save time in converting, I didn`t realise quite what would happen to our masters when at the mercy of the distros when we didn`t do it.

Anyway, the album is now in the correct order on the site, which means the I-Tunes one etc will follow it.
It`s still such early days innit?

Mart, i reckon that mass market CD singles is dead in the water. The CD album will follow but not for a while. There is the case for 320k and wav downloads. Look what Dance music store Juno are doing.

What we have decided to do KZ is, do a short run of singles for PR and the radio stations, then they can save them to their own broadcast format, which hopefully by now is MP4.
Ours leave here at 320k, but I still question that they come back in that format.
One track left here at 5.1 mb and downloads at 3.2mb.
I think Zoo has a point, they are probably set to "auto", where`s Bilbo when you need him?
He was a master craftsmen.

Don

A friend of mine who listens to mostly downloaded tracks looked at me in amazement because I just spent loads on buying SACD's!

He asked me why anyone would want to listen to music in 5.1 surround sound.....

It's taken me ages to just find a cd player that plays SACD's, DVD-Audio's and normal cd's!

DJones wrote:
[quote]Unfortunatley, to sound loud is also very important when the mastering for CDs is done. So even CDs don

Firstly, we stuck with our download people because they did the encoding themselves, but beware, as in all companies the Friday afternoon worker mentality does appear I feel.

It`s a difficult theory on which format is going to settle down at the moment as we know, I bought a cross platform cd player as well and I have to say it gathers dust in the lounge.

One of the things we have to bare in mind I suppose, is that not everybody has access to the systems we listen to music on.
Worse still, quality wise, we are also sending out ring tones of course, that said, once, we were happy with radio Luxembourg and an ear piece and still loved it.